Negotiating Sociotechnical Boundaries: Moderation Work to Counter Racist Attacks in Online Communities

Online communities are susceptible to racist attacks, even when community policies explicitly prohibit racism. Drawing on the concept of symbolic boundary, we explored how community members sustained their communities against the perpetuation of racist logics and practices on Reddit. We drew on trace ethnography to analyze conversations about crime in two city subreddits (i.e., r/baltimore and r/chicago). The findings illustrate that the fragility of community boundaries was contributed by race baiting posts, covert racism, and racist brigading. At the same time, our research highlights that moderation efforts maintained and established institutional, cultural, and geographical boundaries to combat racist attacks. We discuss boundary as a design technique for building safe spaces for community members. Content warning: This work contains racist quotes that can upset or harm some readers.